Alumni Interview: Calvin Cheng

By Sarah Alspaw, Director of Career Development and Student Success

Capitol graduates are doing amazing things. I put out a call for interviews out on LinkedIn and spoke to a few of the first respondents. If you are an alumnus and you are interested in being interviewed, please let me know by emailing careers@captechu.edu.

Calvin Cheng graduated from Capitol in May 2015, with a degree in electrical engineering. Currently he is a Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft in the consulting industry, with responsibility for delivering technical guidance and implementation of Office 365 and SharePoint for Fortune 500 companies. Outside of his professional life, he enjoys travelling across the world. His goal is to travel to every continent.

I had the opportunity to speak with Calvin about his career path and some of the insights he has gathered along the way.

What was your first job out of college?

When I first joined Microsoft out of college, I was a Support Engineer which is essentially Tier 3 troubleshooting for Fortune 500 companies.

What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to a student who is graduating and just starting to look for a job?

1. Take any opportunity you can get to practice interviewing or do mock interviews. It is critical to feel comfortable and confident when you are interviewing for the job you want so practice until it becomes second nature

2. As a new graduate, it can be tough to make it through the initial resume review from a recruiter so definitely make sure that your resume accurately describes your skills and what you can provide.

3. Don't think of your first job as your "dream job". A career is a marathon, so seek to learn as much as you can from your first job and when you feel like you reached your max growth potential, look for other opportunities.

What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to a freshman, starting their first semester at Capitol. Or, alternatively, what do you wish you had started doing earlier in your academic career and why?

1. Get involved in as much as you can because any extracurricular activities become talking points in interviews

2. Take opportunities that demonstrate leadership such as leading a team class project or working in the Capitol Lab to teach others.

Do you see value in working with Career Services for job searching, either through individual appointments or by attending the Career Day, Career Fair, or other workshops?

Absolutely, my first internship I got was just from talking and building a relationship with Career

Services when I came to Capitol. The lady who was in charge at the time had just been asked to provide some candidates for a co-op at Motorola Solutions and since I talked to her regularly, she emailed me about the opportunity. The Career Fair also is a great opportunity to talk to recruiters and get an idea of what types of skills they are looking for so candidates can prepare appropriately.

What skills do you think students need that they will NOT get in their courses? What ways could a student build those skills?

Soft skills or communication skills. These are critical in life and in a career. The better you can express your personality, skills, passions, the more likely you are to do well.

If a student is interested in starting or building their network, do you have any advice for them?

Start early. You want to build a network that you can use in the future. Leverage your alumni in terms of getting mentors.

Did you do an internship? What was that like? Do you suggest students do internships?

Yes, before I graduated I did 3 internships. This was crucial for me to understand the work culture, find out what I was interested in, and find out what I do not like. I would seriously stress everyone should strive for an internship.

When did you start looking for a job when you were a student? About how long did it take? What was difficult about it that you didn’t expect to be difficult when you started?

I started looking for an internship as soon as I got to Capitol College [now Capitol Technology University] as a sophomore. It took around 3 months before my first internship came through. The difficulty I faced in it was that it was very hands off in the sense that I was given a task to do and left alone. This could be tough for some and not others but as someone who is used to more in depth guidance it was tough but it allowed me get a taste for what a real job was like.

What advice would you give to someone in their first professional job to do within their first 90 days to stand out?

1. Don't sit in silence. If you need help and are stuck, ask a coworker for help. Collaboration is key.
2. You may have menial tasks at first, but if you come in with the mindset that every opportunity is a learning one, your manager will notice this and give you bigger tasks to accomplish.

What does “self-direction” mean to you? Do you feel that this is an important skill for a worker to have?

Absolutely, this touches on my earlier answer. Often times managers don't have time to teach you everything, so it falls on to the worker to assess where they are at and quickly accelerate their learning to where they can be productive.

What do you see happening in your industry in the next 5-10 years that students should be aware of?

As the industry moves toward cloud based solutions/computing, cyber security will be huge. Anyone majoring in computer science will also do very well in any market.